


where youth and age lie side by side

by sithblood



Category: Men's Football RPF
Genre: Character Study, Fluff, M/M, excessive use of metaphor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-17 05:30:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16968546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sithblood/pseuds/sithblood
Summary: Eric and Dele spend a lot of time in Portugal together, not saying things.





	where youth and age lie side by side

They had walked all morning just to get here, taking the coastal path that Eric had promised was worth it. The view had been undeniably beautiful, but Dele was sure they would have enjoyed it just the same from the roadside, on the other side of his car's passenger-seat window, blissfully untouched by the naked heat of the midday sun. Dele had told Eric this, of course. Multiple times, and in varying degrees of eloquence, depending on the temperature and the gradient of the hill they were climbing at the time. Eric had just laughed. 

The beach itself was beautiful, obviously. Dele wasn't sure if the whole of Portugal was just fucking beautiful, or if Eric was only showing him the best bits. Either way it felt strange to him, raw and close and weirdly, awkwardly, frustratingly intimate whenever Eric did something normal like speak in Portuguese or talk about streets and shops and parks he used to visit growing up. In London, in a city neither of them knew or cared for outside of the context of football, the whole thing felt almost manageable, almost possible to come to terms with. It became suddenly harder here, in a place one of them loved so deeply. 

"What d'you think?" 

Dele turned, shrugged, chewed at what was left of his thumbnail. The sun felt warmer here, with the cliffs to their backs, shielding them from the coastal wind. 

"Here is fine. Not like there's anyone to get in the way," he replied, as Eric shook out the blanket and laid it on the sand, smoothing the creases out with the toe of his shoe. They really were the only ones here, just sand and wind and sky to keep them company. Dele couldn't remember the last time he had been this alone. 

"Not a bad view," Eric said, dropping the backpack he'd been carrying onto the blanket and moving closer to Dele, both hands fisted in his pockets, bumping his shoulder amiably against Dele's as their bodies met. Dele smiled, watching as the tide licked inwards towards the shore, bubbles of surf leaving foaming, ghostly imprints upon the damp sand. 

"Not quite Milton Keynes, though, is it. Not enough roundabouts for me." 

Eric laughed, and Dele felt it beside him, felt the movements of his body pressed up against his own. They weren't exactly holding hands, but Eric had taken his out of his pockets and the bends of their knuckles brushed up against one another, warm with sweat and afternoon sun. Some things didn't change, then, no matter where in the world you found them. The sound of waves as they broke against the shore. The shape of Eric's hands, of his crooked knuckles, of the feeling of his fingers within Dele's own. 

"I used to come here a lot, back when we lived in Lisbon. It's nicer in the winter, if you can believe," Eric said, quietly. Dele said nothing, because he didn't know how to answer that, how to answer fucking any of it. How was he supposed to be this open, this earnest, this unguarded? _Come and look around Milton Keynes with me, mate._ There was so much beauty in Eric's childhood, so much he was able to love. Dele imagined him here, imagined the pale spectre of a younger, teenaged Eric standing at the shoreline, on the sand-dunes, languid and bony and too serious for his age, a Portuguese boy born in the body of an Englishman, trapped in the flux between both countries, both identities. Eric wanted so much because he knew how to want, had grown up with all this stretching onwards, outwards. Dele had grown up with inches, with gasps, with faint suggestions of a future breaking between the clouds. He knew how to live off less than what you were owed. 

"Do you miss the sea?" Dele asked eventually, which was a stupid question but also all that he could think of to say. Eric clicked his tongue thoughtfully, heavy brows furrowed. 

"I did at first, yeah. In London, it's like - well, you can't really, you know. Get away from - from it all. Everywhere you go, there's another road, another town, whatever. It's more - but yeah, it's okay now. I've got - there's somewhere to go, you know." 

Dele felt the weight of Eric's body beside him, warm, solid, alive, and the heat of the sun on the back of his neck, and the fine spray that blew inland from the surface of the sea, and yeah, yeah, he knew; Eric didn't need to say it, really. They were past that. Dele had grown up in a land-locked city, so he didn't really get the sea, but he got Eric, and he got what it meant to feel like everything was closing in on you, like there was nowhere left unsearched, unwatched. 

"Hope you're not talking about me, Dier," Dele said, turning towards him and looking at him properly, from beneath the heavy lid of narrowed eyes. Eric shrugged, half-smiling, arms hugged around his chest, earnest and embarrassed and open and lovely, pink from sunburn even after all those years living in Portugal. "'Cos if you were," Dele said, eyes dropping to Eric's lips, neck, chest, "then that's just cringey, really. Just so cheesy." 

Dele kissed him first, and Eric sunk into it, his limbs soft and pliable beneath the gentle press of Dele's fingers. They'd done this so many times before, in so many different ways, and Dele tried to tell himself that it didn't mean more or less than any of the others, but that was a lie. It felt like a promise, like making love for the first time, like meeting parents, like proposing, marrying, conceiving. Here, on the shore of Eric's past, in the country that was undeniably his, kissing him meant so much more. In London it was easy to pretend like it was singular, isolated, a product of the environment they both shared, like it was friends messing around, venting the stresses of their day to day. Friends didn't go on couples' holidays to their hometowns and hike around the Portuguese countryside and kiss each other on beaches, no matter how far Dele stretched to justify it to himself. 

They pulled apart for air, only marginally, only so that their noses were touching, and Dele buried his face in Eric's neck, pressed small kisses against his throat, his collarbone, the stretch of his jaw. He tasted like salt, like sea, like stone, and held Dele like they had all the time in the world, drew slow patterns into the small of his back. Dele couldn't give him much, he really couldn't, couldn't give him breathing space, couldn't give him honesty - couldn't even give himself that - but he could give him this. Dele hoped Eric felt it in the way he kissed him, the way he touched him, held him so close. He didn't have much, he wasn't Eric and he never would be, he was okay with that, but he had this.

**Author's Note:**

> I almost shit myself when I finished this because I realised I didn't actually know if Lisbon was near the sea. Can you tell I never did GCSE Geography? 
> 
> Title is from Youth and Age, a poem written by Sappho.


End file.
